Mort

“Christ on a crutch…” Selena Said as she entered Mars Pizzeria. “It’s like coming home!”

She looked pointedly up at the crudely patched ceiling, and then around at the dark walls. “Well, if home was in the middle of a warzone.” She turned and looked at all of us. “Which, now it is.”

We all followed as she walked further into the building, the squad milling in behind us. She walked behind the front counter, and then reached up under it, a beautific smile blooming on her face. “I knew I left some here,” she said, and pulled both an unopened pack of Marlboro Reds and an unopened pack of cotton candy Bubble Yum out.

I snickered and I heard some giggles throughout the room. Both my friends and The Squad getting the joke.

Selena was addicted to two things: Bubblegum, and Marlboro Red cigarettes. We didn’t think that the bubblegum would kill her, but the cigarettes someday would.

“Both of these are really hard to find now.”

Kind of like Woody Harrelson in Zombieland, looking for the last pack of Twinkies.

I smiled. The scene where Woody and Jesse Eisenberg find the abandoned Hostess truck on the side of the road, only to find out that it was filled with hundreds of Pink Snowballs is still one of my favorite movie scenes ever. I don’t like Snowballs, no matter the color, because I hate coconut. But still, that scene was priceless.

Especially Woody Harrelson’s Reaction. Oh, and of course, Jesse Eisenberg’s mouthful of Snowball mumbling, “I like Snowballs.”

Selena walked further back into the preparation area, and ran her hand over the old, worn pizza oven. “Hey there, girl. Do you still work?”

She turned and looked at us, her eyes wide. “She’s still warm!”

“We use her every day,” Ellie said, “At least we will until the gas gives out.”

Selena nodded.

Ellie was standing back by Oz, close, but not touching him. He looked so lost.

Selena opened the oven and looked inside, and then peered over at Ellie again. “How do you even have dough to shove in this thing?”

Ellie gave Oz another worried look, but then came over to where Selena was standing by the oven.

“As soon as we figured that the oven was still working, but the freezer and the cooler weren’t, I spent a day putting everything I could get my hands on into my inventory. Turns out it all stays good in there.”

Selena smirked at Ellie. “How about we fire this bitch up and show my girls how good old Mars Pizzeria pizza is?”

Ellie smiled back. “Let’s do it.”

As Ellie pulled the ingredients out of her inventory, Selena washed her hands at the back kitchen sink, and then got going on the preparation.

The squad watched with rapt attention as their leader whipped up three large pizzas. One cheese, one mushroom, and one pepperoni with extra cheese.

She’d remembered our taste for pepperoni with extra cheese.

Of course she had. Selena had a memory like a steel trap, and worshiped at the shrine of organization and Marie Kondo.

Leave it to Wood, though, to ask her questions none of us wanted answered right then.

“So, let’s get back to the whole you have to kill somebody to be turned into a monster thing.”

Ellie shot him a scathing gland, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Selena looked over at Oz, for a moment, ignoring Woods question. But then Oz looked up at her, their eyes meeting, and he nodded to her.

Looked like he was fine with her answering.

“Well, it’s not like I found it written anywhere, or heard the freaking aliens chatting about it. I wouldn’t put it past them, though. The fuckers. I’ve just noticed no matter where we go, the monsters that turn human after we kill him usually have someone left behind that tells us how they used to be. And over and over again, I heard the phrase, they were finally getting over the guilt of what they’d done. Or some shit like that. They all seemed to have in common that they’d killed somebody in their past.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Wood looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then he nodded. Georgina killed her father around the time the aliens attacked.

“Motherfucking shit balls!” I said. “She killed her dad?”

Wood turned and glared at me. He was trying to kill her. She was defending herself.”

I held up my hands, not wanting him to get angry again with me again. Who knew what else he had up his sleeve, besides blowing me up.

Wood always had a penchant for horror movies. What if he decided to bury me alive? Or throw me down well where no one could hear me scream.

The thought of that really sent a chill for me. Which confused me. I was getting strange feelings, like physical feelings. Things that I’d only felt when I’d been human.

“And the Travai,” Teddy said.

Oh yeah, the Travai.

“There had always been those rumors that they had killed people before,” Teddy said.

I’d heard those rumors too.

A thought occurred to me, and I spoke it out loud before I actually thought it through.

“And the Hobbs?”

Everyone turned and looked at me, except for Teddy. Right then and there I knew I’d stepped on it. I shouldn’t have said a thing.

“Who?” Ellie asked.

Wood was glaring holes through me. Maybe I was going to get buried alive sooner than I’d thought.

“Celia and Calvin Hobbs.” Teddy said. “She was the school counselor, and he’s her husband.” Teddy looked at me. I couldn’t read his expression. “They’re ghouls now.”

Ellie’s brow furrowed. “Ghouls? Like those things that live in graveyards and eat dead bodies?”

Selena nodded as she shoved another pizza into the oven. “I’ve seen a few of those. They don’t usually live in graveyards anymore. Bodies have too many chemicals pumped into him nowadays. Pretty much they go around a town and find corpses, and take them home.”

I got a chill imagining what the Hobbs’ house looked like—with rotting corpses.

Fucking gross.

“How do you know them?” Oz asked Teddy.

Wood was abruptly right beside his brother, his hand clamped down on his shoulder protectively. “None of your fucking business, blood sucker.”

Ellie’s eyes opened wide, fury practically burning in them. “Don’t be a jackass, Wood. You’re dating a monster as well.”

The two stared at each other, until Wood looked away. “She’s not a monster.”

“Neither is Oz,” she said, glaring right at him.

I think they both were suffering from a shared delusion. But I kept my mouth shut.

So far, all I could tell was that some monsters were good, and didn’t try to kill us, and some monsters were bad. They definitely tried to kill us.

Georgina was in the good column. But she had tried to kill us as soon as she’d seen us.

I guess you could say that some kind of fucked up meet-cute. Either way, the grenade she’d tossed at us had been pretty useful against the giant Minecraft spider. And since then, she’d been pretty helpful in keeping us alive. Especially when Miss. Biddle came a calling.

Selena was busy turning the pizzas, and keeping an eye on them. “Thank God it’s daylight out still. I’d never be able to see in the oven at night.”

Ellie produced a flashlight out of thin air and hand it to Selena. “I use one of these whenever I’m checking on them. Sometimes we don’t get cooking until after dark.”

Selena accepted the flashlight, clicked it on with her thumb, and pointed it into the oven at the pizzas. “Oooo… they’re almost done.”

Thank God.

The sooner we had pizza in everyone’s mouths, the sooner we would stop talking about what caused people to turn into monsters.

Which was a good idea…

But then Wood asked, “So Selena, is there some kind of commonality when it comes to the people that survived the alien invasion?”

What kind of unholy shit was this?

Selena nodded her head of red curls, chewing her pizza and then swallowing. “As far as I can tell, everyone that survived—even the ones that turned into monsters—are gamers.”

“Oh…” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that.”

Teddy turned to Wood. “Is Georgina a gamer?”

Wood smiled. “She said she loved Splatter House, God of war, and The Last of Us.

I shook my head. “But Cheryl? What did she play?”

Selena piped up, holding a piece of mushroom pizza up in salute. “Cheryl loved Grand Theft Auto, and The Sims.

I smiled. I could just see her playing either one of those. Probably munching on popcorn or candy corn. She loved them both.

Morosely I wondered what video games the Hobbs played. I also wondered how they both became monsters? Had they both accidentally killed somebody in their past? Or had they killed them on purpose, together?

Then I wondered if Teddy knew. And if he knew, would he tell me?

Before I’d died and came back, I would’ve thought Teddy would’ve told me anything.

Everything.

But now? I didn’t know…

Selena wiped her lips with one of the Mars Pizzeria napkins we had left. “Well, that was a great dinner. The only thing missing is dessert!” And a second later a giant bag of Swedish fish popped into her hand. In her other hand materialized a Halloween size bag of assorted mini chocolate bars.

“Oh hell yeah!” Wood cheered.

The cheerleaders all joined in, performing an impromptu cheer for Selena and her hidden desserts.

“It’s amazing,” the cheerleader named Dinah said from beside me. “Selena always seems to have something sugary up her sleeve.”

I nodded my head.

Indeed, she did.